Famous people who grew up or lived in Italy

Alcide De Gasperi1881–1954

📍 Via Alcide De Gasperi 1, 38050 Pieve Tesino (TN), Italy

I was born Alcide Amedeo Francesco De Gasperi on the 3rd of April 1881 in Pieve Tesino, a small mountain village in the Trentino — then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now northern…

Alessandra Ferri1963–1980

📍 Milan, Lombardy, Italy

Alessandra Ferri was born in Milan in May 1963 and grew up in and around the city, later moving with her family to Monza, just to the north. Her parents did not go to the theatre, but from…

Amedeo Modigliani1884–1902

📍 Via Roma 38, 57126 Livorno, Italy

I was born in this house in Livorno, the Tuscan port city, in July 1884, just as bailiffs were carrying off my family's possessions. My father's business had failed, but an old law said…

Andrea Pirlo1979–1995

📍 Flero, Brescia, Italy

Andrea Pirlo was born in May 1979 in Flero, a small village in the flat countryside a few kilometres south of Brescia, in Lombardy. His father ran a metal trading business in Brescia, which…

Antonio Vivaldi1678–1741

📍 Riva degli Schiavoni, Castello, 30122 Venice, Italy

I was born Antonio Lucio Vivaldi on the 4th of March 1678 in Venice, the son of Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, a barber and violinist. Venice was the most musical city in the world at the end…

Archimedes287 BC–212 BC

📍 Ortygia, 96100 Syracuse, Sicily, Italy

I was born in Syracuse, then a great Greek city in Sicily, around 287 BC. My father, Phidias, was an astronomer, and from him I learned to watch the heavens and to love mathematics…

Augustus36 BC–14

📍 House of Augustus, Palatine Hill, 00186 Rome, Italy

I was born Gaius Octavius into a well-to-do family from Velletri, and my great-uncle Julius Caesar made me his heir in his will. After his murder I fought my way to power and became Rome's…

Caravaggio1604–1605

📍 Vicolo del Divino Amore 19, 00186 Rome, Italy

I was born Michelangelo Merisi and grew up in Milan and the small town of Caravaggio nearby; plague took my father when I was a child, and my mother died when I was a young man. I came to…

Carla Fracci1936–1954

📍 Milan, Lombardy, Italy

I was born in Milan in August 1936, the daughter of Luigi Fracci, a tram driver, and my mother, who worked in a factory. We were a working-class family and lived modestly. When the war…

Christopher Columbus1455–1470

📍 Casa di Cristoforo Colombo, Vico Dritto di Ponticello, 16121 Genoa, Italy

Between the ages of about four and nineteen I lived with my family in a narrow house just outside the Porta Soprana, the twin-towered medieval gate of Genoa. On the ground floor was the…

Dante Alighieri1265–1302

📍 Casa di Dante, Via Santa Margherita 1, 50122 Florence, Italy

I was born in 1265 in the crowded heart of medieval Florence, in the Alighieri houses near the Torre della Castagna and the little church of San Martino del Vescovo, a few streets from the…

Enrico Fermi1901–1908

📍 Via Gaeta 19, 00185 Rome, Italy

I was born in September 1901 in a building on Via Gaeta, near Termini station in Rome, where my father, Alberto, worked as an administrator for the state railways. My mother, Ida, was a…

Federico Fellini1920–1939

📍 Rimini, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

I was born in January 1920 at Via Dardanelli 10 in Rimini, then a sleepy little town on the Adriatic that came alive each summer with holidaymakers, and I lived in several houses around the…

Francesco Totti1976–1993

📍 Via Vetulonia, Rome, Italy

Francesco Totti was born in Rome in September 1976 and grew up in an apartment at Via Vetulonia 18, in Porta Metronia, a lively working-class neighbourhood just inside the ancient Aurelian…

Galileo Galilei1631–1642

📍 Villa Il Gioiello, Via del Pian dei Giullari 42, 50125 Florence, Italy

I was born in Pisa, the son of a lute player and music theorist who taught me to question authority and to trust experiment; as a young man I timed the swinging lamps of Pisa cathedral…

George Clooneyfrom 2002

📍 Villa Oleandra, Laglio, Province of Como, Italy

George Clooney grew up in Kentucky and southern Ohio, in Augusta and the towns around Cincinnati, the son of a local TV newsman, Nick Clooney, and nephew of the singer Rosemary Clooney …

Giacomo Puccini1858–1924

📍 Corte San Lorenzo 9, 55100 Lucca LU, Tuscany, Italy

I was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini on the 22nd of December 1858 in Lucca, a walled Tuscan city of extraordinary beauty. The Puccini family had provided the…

Gianluigi Buffon1978–1991

📍 Carrara, Tuscany, Italy

Gianluigi Buffon was born in January 1978 in Carrara, the Tuscan town famous for the white marble quarried from the Apuan Alps above it, and grew up there and in Marina di Carrara, by the…

Giuseppe Verdi1813–1901

📍 Via Verdi 10, 43011 Roncole Verdi, Parma, Italy

I was born on the 10th of October 1813 in Le Roncole, a village in the Duchy of Parma, the son of an innkeeper. The Parma countryside — flat, agricultural, the Po Valley stretching to the…

Guglielmo Marconi1874–1896

📍 Villa Griffone, Via Celestini 1, 40037 Pontecchio Marconi, Sasso Marconi, Italy

I grew up at Villa Griffone, my father's country estate at Pontecchio, in the green hills along the Reno valley just south of Bologna. My father, Giuseppe, was a wealthy landowner, and my…

Hadrian128–138

📍 Villa Adriana, Largo Marguerite Yourcenar 1, 00010 Tivoli, Italy

My family came from Italica in Spain, and when my father died when I was ten, my cousin, the future emperor Trajan, became my guardian. I spent half my reign on the move, from Britain…

Jannik Sinner2001–2015

📍 Sexten, South Tyrol, Italy

Jannik Sinner was born in Innichen, in the Dolomite mountains of South Tyrol, in August 2001, and grew up in Sexten, a small German-speaking village close to the Austrian border, surrounded…

Julius Caesar

📍 Domus Publica, Roman Forum, Rome, Italy

As Pontifex Maximus I lived in the Domus Publica — the official residence that stood at the edge of the Roman Forum, between the temple of Vesta and the Sacred Way. To walk out my front…

Leonardo da Vinci

📍 Anchiano, Vinci, Tuscany, Italy

I was born Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci on the 15th of April 1452 in Anchiano, a small hamlet near the town of Vinci in the Tuscan hills. I was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary…

Luciano Pavarotti2005–2007

📍 Stradello Nava 6, 41126 Modena, Italy

I was born in 1935 on the edge of Modena, and the four of us — my father, mother, sister and I — were crowded into a two-room flat in a working-class block. My father, Fernando, was a baker…

Marcus Aurelius121–138

📍 Caelian Hill, 00184 Rome, Italy

I was born in my family's house on the Caelian Hill in Rome in 121, a quiet district of aristocratic villas and gardens, with few public buildings and fine views across the city. My father…

Michelangelo1475–1488

📍 Caprese Michelangelo, AR 52033, Tuscany, Italy

I was born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni on the 6th of March 1475 in Caprese, a small Tuscan village near Arezzo. My mother died when I was six and I was raised by a…

Nero64–68

📍 Domus Aurea, Via della Domus Aurea 1, 00184 Rome, Italy

My father died when I was very small, and my mother Agrippina schemed tirelessly until I became emperor at sixteen. In the year 64 a great fire destroyed two-thirds of Rome, and on the…

Niccolò Machiavelli1513–1527

📍 Albergaccio, Via Scopeti 64, 50026 Sant'Andrea in Percussina, Italy

I grew up in Florence, where my father, a lawyer of modest means, loved books and taught me to love the Roman historians. For fourteen years I served the Florentine republic as a secretary…

Paolo Maldini1968–1985

📍 Milan, Lombardy, Italy

Paolo Maldini was born in Milan in June 1968 into a family where football was a way of life. His father, Cesare, had captained AC Milan to the club's first European Cup in 1963 and won four…

Raphael1483–1495

📍 Via Raffaello 57, 61029 Urbino PU, Marche, Italy

I was born Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino on the 6th of April 1483 in Urbino, the capital of a small duchy in central Italy ruled by the Montefeltro family — one of the most cultivated courts…

Roberto Baggio1967–1985

📍 Caldogno, Vicenza, Italy

Roberto Baggio was born in February 1967 in Caldogno, a small town in the flat farmland of the Veneto, just north of Vicenza, the sixth of eight children of Florindo and Matilde Baggio. The…

Saint Francis of Assisi

📍 Piazza del Comune, 06081 Assisi PG, Umbria, Italy

I was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone around 1181 in Assisi, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. I grew up enjoying the pleasures that wealth provided until illness, imprisonment…

Sandro Botticelli1445–1510

📍 Borgo Ognissanti, 50123 Florence, Italy

I was born in Florence in the 1440s in a house on Borgo Ognissanti, the street that runs west along the river towards the church of All Saints. My father, Mariano Filipepi, was a tanner…

Sophia Loren1934–1949

📍 Pozzuoli, Naples, Italy

Sophia Loren was born Sofia Scicolone in Rome in September 1934. Her father refused to marry her mother, Romilda, and soon after her birth Romilda took her home to Pozzuoli, a poor fishing…

Thomas Aquinas

📍 Roccasecca, 03038 Frosinone, Lazio, Italy

I was born Tommaso d'Aquino around 1225 at Roccasecca castle in the Kingdom of Sicily, the son of a count. My family intended me for Benedictine monasticism at the prestigious Monte…